"Once there was a mermaid who dared to love a wolf. Her love for him was so sudden and so fierce that it tore her tail into legs."

Sephora Golding lives in the shadow of her unbelievably beautiful mother. Even though they scrape by in the seedier part of Venice Beach, she's always felt lucky. As a child, she imagined she was a minor but beloved character in her mother's fairy tale. But now, at sixteen, the fairy tale is less Disney and more Grimm. And she wants the story to be her own.

Then she meets Felix, and the fairy tale takes a turn she never imagined.

"Things don't really turn out the way they do in fairy tales. I'm telling you that right up front, so you're not disappointed later."

Sometimes, a story is just a way to hide the unspeakable in plain sight.